The Time Lords divert the Doctor and Sarah to Karn. The planet is home
to the Sisterhood of the Flame, whose sacred fire -- which provides an
elixir granting them eternal life and is used by the Time Lords to aid
in regenerative crises -- is slowly dying. The Sisterhood believes the
Doctor has come to steal the vestiges of the elixir and has him
captured. Also on Karn, meanwhile, is the mad Doctor Solon, who has
covertly taken possession of the brain of Morbius, an evil Time Lord
thought to have been executed. Solon is trying to build a new body for
Morbius, and is lacking only a suitable head: the head of a Time
Lord.

Production

One of Doctor Who producer Philip Hinchcliffe's interests when it
came to science-fiction was robotics. Intrigued by the works of Isaac
Asimov, Hinchcliffe wanted to do a story which explored the relationship
between man and machine -- a different angle than had been attempted in
the Season Twelve debut Robot. That
adventure's author, former series script editor Terrance Dicks, had gone
on to write a Doctor Who stage play called Seven Keys To
Doomsday for the Christmas 1974 season (starring Trevor Martin in
the title role), and had subsequently penned a rejected storyline for
the programme entitled “The Haunting”. Dicks was now called
upon by script editor Robert Holmes to conceive a serial based upon
Hinchcliffe's suggestions.

In addition to the robotics angle, Holmes and Dicks sought to
incorporate elements of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein, or
The Modern Prometheus. The story of a scientist who brings to life a
man assembled from corpses, it had found great popularity when it became
a part of Universal Pictures' horror canon as Frankenstein in
1931; Hammer Studios had also made a series of movies starring the
monster, beginning with 1957's The Curse Of Frankenstein. The use
of Frankenstein as the foundation for a Doctor Who serial
was in keeping with Holmes' tendency to base adventures on classic works
of gothic horror; indeed, “The Haunting” had been an attempt
at a vampire story.

The Frankenstein elements
reflected Robert Holmes' tendency to base adventures on classic works of
gothic horror

Dicks was commissioned to write the storyline for The Brain Of
Morbius on May 1st, 1975. The intention was that it would become
Serial 4K, the penultimate adventure of Doctor Who's thirteenth
season. As such, Dicks was asked to formulate it in such a way that no
filming (location, model, or otherwise) would be needed -- thereby
saving money for the final adventure of the season. The Brain Of
Morbius would therefore be the first completely studiobound
Doctor Who serial.

Dicks envisaged a story in which a space criminal called Morbius (likely
named after the character in the 1956 feature film Forbidden
Planet, which had inspired Planet Of
Evil earlier in the season) crashlands onto a planet, and his
robot servant -- who lacks any sense of aesthetics -- assembles a new
body for him from other aliens, in ignorance of their vastly differing
physiognomies. Dicks drew partly upon the costumes for the
Clawrantulars, creatures which had appeared in Seven Keys To
Doomsday, for the crab-like elements of Morbius' new body. He also
decided to set the action upon the planet Karn (which had been the home
of a decayed civilisation in the stage play) and took inspiration from H
Rider Haggard's 1886 serial novel She in developing the
Sisterhood of Karn and their Flame of Life.

Dicks was commissioned to turn The Brain Of Morbius into full
scripts on June 6th, and completed his work just before leaving the
country on holiday. Unfortunately, around this time Hinchcliffe and
Holmes concluded that Morbius' robot servant would be too expensive to
realise. The production team was also concerned that Dicks had veered
too far away from the horror elements they desired. By the time of
Dicks' return, time was growing short and so the writer agreed to let
Holmes restructure his scripts.

Holmes therefore replaced the robot with a mad scientist named Solon and
his servant Condo, an homage to the Universal Frankenstein's Igor
character and his many imitators. The script for episode one included an
unusual piece of incidental continuity, featuring a Mutt (from The Mutants) called Kriz in its opening
moments. The final installment also featured a controversial sequence in
which the faces of previous incarnations of the Doctor are displayed,
including some which were envisaged as preceding the original televised
Doctor, William Hartnell. This was in contradiction to The Three Doctors, which had established
Hartnell's version as the first Doctor.

Terrance Dicks was very unhappy with the degree to which
Robert Holmes had rewritten The Brain Of
Morbius

Unfortunately, upon receiving the revised scripts for The Brain Of
Morbius on September 15th, Dicks was very unhappy with the degree of
rewriting Holmes had performed. In the ensuing days, he grew to
understand why the production team had made such substantial changes,
but Dicks continued to feel that the removal of the robot character had
done great damage to the central ideas of the story. Hinchcliffe, Holmes
and Dicks finally met to discuss the situation, and it was suggested
that The Brain Of Morbius might instead be credited to Holmes, or
to the “Stephen Harris” pseudonym used earlier that season
for Pyramids Of Mars. Finally, on September
22nd, Dicks wrote Holmes to ask that the script editor “devise
some bland pseudonym” for use on The Brain Of Morbius; an
obeisant Holmes therefore credited the serial to “Robin
Bland”, much to Dicks' amusement.

The director assigned to The Brain Of Morbius was Christopher
Barry, whose last Doctor Who work had been on Robot. Inspired by the Frankenstein
trappings of the serial, Barry considered casting silver screen horror
icons such as Vincent Price (House Of Wax, The Abominable Dr
Phibes and Hammer Horror staple Peter Cushing (who had also starred
in two film versions of Doctor Who) in the role of Solon. The
role ultimately went to Philip Madoc.

Production on The Brain Of Morbius began with a two-day session
at BBC Television Centre Studio 1. Monday, October 6th concerned the
majority of episode one, as well as material on Karn's rocky surface for
the remaining three installments. Tuesday the 7th saw the rest of
episode one recorded, picking up from Sarah spilling her wine, in
addition to the initial laboratory scene and the majority of part
two.

A fortnight later, the second recording block took place in TC3 on
October 20th and 21st. The first day dealt principally with episode
three, although it also encompassed part two sequences in the crypt and
on the staircase, as well as the chandelier smashing for part one and
the wounded Condo in the gallery for part four. Apart from all the
remaining episode four material, the 21st also involved the completion
of the last few scenes of the preceding installment, as well as the
sacrificial bonfire for part two.

Members of the crew were pressed into service as the
Doctor's previously unseen earlier incarnations

This day also included the recording of the mental duel between the
Doctor and Morbius. Hinchcliffe had originally planned to have
well-known actors photographed as the Doctor's earlier incarnations, but
was unable to find suitable candidates. Instead, members of the crew of
The Brain Of Morbius and The Seeds Of
Doom, the next serial in production, were dressed in period garb
and pressed into service. These included Hinchcliffe, Holmes, Barry,
The Seeds Of Doom director Douglas
Camfield, production manager George Gallaccio, Robert Banks Stewart
(writer of The Seeds Of Doom), and
production assistants Chris Baker and Graeme Harper. The images of both
Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee came from The
Three Doctors, while William Hartnell was represented by a
photograph from The Space Museum.

Taping of Serial 4K then wrapped up with a remount of two scenes from
part four, likely those in which Morbius attacks Solon and Solon
recovers. This additional recording took place on October 24th, in an
unknown studio at BBC Television Centre. The Brain Of Morbius was
broadcast during January 1976. It brought with it a new round of
criticism from National Viewers' and Listeners' Association president
Mary Whitehouse, who was becoming increasingly vocal in her opposition
to Hinchcliffe and Holmes' more horrific slant on Doctor Who. It
would not be the last time that Whitehouse and the Doctor Who
production team would come into conflict...